


I-S-A-A-C

by jacksonclitmore



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-14 03:06:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1250395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacksonclitmore/pseuds/jacksonclitmore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Set after Unleashed] Derek demands Isaac move out of the loft, and when Isaac refuses, Derek pitches a glass at him. Isaac endures Derek's abuse for some time, until Scott and Stiles intervene and blackbag him from the loft. But rather than moving into Scott's house, Isaac moves into Stiles' closet. The story begins a week after Isaac moves into Stiles' closet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I-S-A-A-C

Closet. Close. Clothes.

He thought the similarity of those words uncanny. They were like tenses of the same verb. Swim, swam, swum. Drink, drank, drunk. Closet, close, clothes. He whispered them inaudibly to himself, then knocked out the number of letters in each word on the shadow-door.

Closet. C-L-O-S-E-T. Six knocks for _closet_.

Close. C-L-O-S-E. Five knocks for _close_.

Clothes. C-L-O-T—

“QUIT IT, WOULD’YA!?” rumbled the voice through the shadow-door. It was Stiles’ voice, of course. But not seeing him for so long disembodied his particular shout, so Isaac had taken to calling him “the voice,” just as he had taken to calling the black rectangle of space where the door should be “the shadow-door.”

It was imperative he complete the count.

He muzzled himself until the sound of keys clicking resumed, and then he posed his fist before the shadow-door and counted.

Clothes. C-L-O-T-H-E—

“Oh, my GOD!” cried the voice. The world outside stirred, and then a pair of flat feet marched to Isaac and delivered a kick to the shadow-door sharp as a  jab to the stomach. Isaac immediately shrunk to the closet’s far corner.

“Can you _please_ be quiet? _Please?_ All I’m asking for is a few hours here, then you can knock all you want. OK?”

Isaac said nothing.

“ _Thank_ you.”

Once the feet thudded away, Isaac groped the plushy-stalagmite ceiling and tugged one of Stiles’ flannels off its hanger. Then he wrapped himself in it and tried to fall asleep.

* * *

 

Discerning if his eyes were open or shut was a discrimination between two shades of black. Isaac frisked the pits between his brow and cheekbones and felt his lashes squirm under his descending fingertips. His eyes were open.

Often he did not need the tactile test. A rim of light would filter under the shadow-door and make the distinction for him. But no light filtered under the shadow-door now, which meant it either was night in the world outside or Stiles was napping with the lights out.  He often took afternoon naps once he finished his homework.

Isaac unwrapped an arm from Stiles’ flannel straightjacket and outstretched it to the shadow-door. Then he took a bracing breath and counted:

Clothes. C-L-O-T-H-E-S. Seven knocks for _clothes._

Relief overspread him heavy as the closet’s darkness.

Then he thought, _cloth_ has five words. _Close_ has five words as well, and so does _Isaac_. Perhaps there was a connection. Cloth was what you closed up in a closet, as was Isaac. He submitted his knuckles to the shadow-door and counted it out:

Isaac. I-S-A-A-C. Five knocks for _Isaac_.

But he already knew that.

He brainstormed other words with five letters in them to expand his network. There was _crawl, bored_ , _sleep_ , _light_ , _black_ , _smack_ , _bleed_ , _death_. Another word with five letters was _Derek._

Derek. D-E-R-E-K. Five knocks for _Derek_.

Strangely he felt nothing.

Two Boost Bars ago Derek had come sniffing around Stiles’ room for clues.

“Have you heard from Isaac?” his voice asked.

“Can’t say I’ve ever heard of an “Isaac.” You should try the Yellow Pages,” said Stiles’ voice.

“Come on,” said Derek’s voice.

“You come on.”

Then Derek’s feet tanked around the room for clues. When he drew near the shadow-door, Isaac shrunk to the far corner. He heard his heartbeat telegraphing his coordinates to Derek. I-S-A-A-C. _Isaac_.

“What are you doing?” Stiles’ voice asked.

Derek said nothing. Isaac heard his nostrils vacuuming up his scent in the air.

“Hey, I’m talking to you. What do you think you’re doing?”

“What does _who_ think they’re doing, Stiles?” said the downstairs voice. That was Stiles’ father.

His feet began thumping upstairs, and then there was a peel of rapid thunder and a rusty squeak and wind. Isaac apprehended that Derek had vaulted through the window.

When Stiles’ father thumped into the room, Stiles told him he had been on the phone with Scott.

Remembering this all made Isaac very tried. He rewrapped himself in Stiles’ flannel and sacked over onto his side, then he tapped out the letters in “sleep” with his foot.

Sleep. S-L-E-E-P. Five knocks for _sleep_.

* * *

 

Three solid whops on the shadow-door woke him. Isaac upturned himself and regarded the black space where the door should be. There was silence, and then the whops started again.

Whop. Whop. Whop. Whop. Who—

“What?” he asked.

The whops ceased.

“You awake in there?” the voice asked. “You got a visitor.”

“Who?” Isaac asked.

The voice said nothing.

Stiles’ flat feet thudded away, and Isaac tracked them as they rumbled downstairs and crossed the room below. A door squealed open and shut. Then two sets of feet tromped back upstairs and into the room.

“Is he in there?” a voice asked. It was Scott.

“Right where you left him,” said Stiles’ voice.

“Oh, my God,” said Scott’s voice. “Have you let him out at _all_?”

“What!? Yes! I mean, yeah. Two bathroom breaks a day, just like you said.”

“ _Two_?”

“Dude, he’s staying in _my_ closet. You can be pretty sure I’m not gonna let him shit himself in my _own_ closet.”

There was silence.

Then Scott’s voice said, “Give me the key.”

One set of feet thudded to the shadow-door, and Isaac heard the key zip into the lock. Then the dark glob of shadow where the knob should be began to clank mechanically one way and another.

Isaac dashed off the flannel, balled it up and tucked it between two overhanging shirts. Friction suspended the flannel invisibly between the two.

The shadow-knob clanked full-right, and then light hemorrhaged from the rupture between the shadow-door and its frame. This light shaved across the shadow-door and warmed it honey-brown, and well felt like a fireball in the eye.

Isaac screened his forearm over his eyes until he accommodated the brilliance enough to squint. On the pallet of Stiles’ chlorine blue wall, he distinguished stark hunks of black-brown that chiseled into human shapes: Scott with his hand on the doorknob; and Stiles a distance behind him.

The immediate depth made his stomach drop, as if overlooking a skyscraper’s ledge. He outstretched his hand gawkily and swiped at Stiles, and watched how his enormous, foreshortened fingers ghosted right over him.

Scott knelt, and spread his arms as you do for a small child or a dog.

“Isaac!” he said.

Isaac stuck one arm in front of the other, mechanically as a robot, and crawled into Scott’s arms.

“You look terrible, Isaac,” Scott said.

He thought he must well look terrible. An infinitesimal tremor of hypoglycemia rattled in his hands. He felt that hollow cavities had replaced his muscles. And vaguely he was aware of his hair flattened against his head’s left side from when he had slept.

“I feel worse,” he said.

Scott brushed down the hair on his head’s left side.

“Can you stand?” Scott asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Why?”

“Because we’re getting you out of here.”

“Where am I going now?”

“My house—just for another week. Lydia’s still trying to find an apartment out of town.”

“Still?”

Scott said nothing. Then he said, “Can you stand?”

Scott helped Isaac onto his feet. He found that he couldn’t stand completely upright, but rather he slouched like an elderly man. He wobbled in a semicircle to regard the closet.

It seemed much smaller when illuminated than when dark. A litter of silver Boost Bar wrappers peppered the floor like shimmery insect skins. Six drained water bottles composed a pyramid on one wall. And Isaac could tell where he had tucked the flannel—two shirts bulged subtly off-right.

When they decided to depart, Stiles clapped them both between their shoulder blades.

He said to Isaac, “Can’t say I’m gonna miss you. Knock knock knock.”

It had been too dark to see anything the night they whisked him upstairs into the closet, so Isaac took careful stock of everything he saw as he and Scott thudded downstairs and crossed the interior rooms.

Dusty green couch. Oily linoleum kitchen floor. Varnished key rack with two hooks, one empty.

The weather outside was heavy-humid and gusty. In the driveway, Scott’s motorbike slouched on its kickstand beside Stiles’ Jeep. Scott capped his head with one black bowling-ball helmet, and gave the other to Isaac. Then they mounted his bike and coasted onto the street.

The motorbike rumbled terribly between Isaac’s legs. He encircled Scott’s waist, and smelled the faint stench of cat food on his skin. He must have come straight over from work at the animal clinic, Isaac thought. Scott slumped onto the handlebars and the motorbike revved, slicing the distance between Stiles’ house and Scott’s house like a knife.

* * *

 

“He didn’t feed me.”

The kitchen prickled with a slight oriental scent. Scott stood at the stove, jabbing a wok’s handle back and forth over a blue flame. A hiss of white smoke twisted into the overhead vent.

Scott turned his head. “Huh?”

“Stiles,” said Isaac. “He didn’t feed me.”

Isaac hunched over his empty bowl at the breakfast bar. So far he had wolfed down two servings of Scott’s stir fry, but his stomach still felt like a pit.

“What about all those wrappers?” Scott asked. “I saw them in the closet.”

“He gave me two energy bars a day. Each one is supposed to replace one meal, so he was still underfeeding me with only two meals a day.”

 Scott said nothing.

“And he didn’t give me enough bathroom breaks.”

“I know.”

“No. He only gave me _one_ a day, at midnight before _he_ went to bed. If he remembered.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not that I could go anyway. You know, it’s a little hard to shit when you haven’t _eaten_ anything except imitation chocolate for a week—”

“Isaac!”

Scott cranked down the stove’s far-right dial and the blue flame retreated into the burner. Then he ferried the wok to the breakfast bar and upended it in Isaac’s bowl.

“I’m sorry,” Scott said. “I’m sorry he didn’t feed you enough and I’m sorry he didn’t give you enough bathroom breaks. But he was the only one who could take you in.”

Isaac said nothing. He skewered a scrub of broccoli on his fork.

“You know we’re trying to do what’s best for you, right?”

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

Isaac thought, _it feels like you’re trying to throw me away_.

Scott frowned. He circled the breakfast bar and appeared at Isaac’s back. He laid his hand reassuringly on Isaac’s shoulder.

“We’re trying,” he said.

* * *

 

Once Isaac’s belly was packed full as a dull boulder the stomachache disappeared. Then, not squandering a second, Scott ushered him into the upstairs bathroom.

He had not bathed in more than a week, and his clothes emanated a sweaty, friendly smell. When he shed them, Scott collected them in a bundle and shuttled them from the room. Faintly he knew he would not get them back; with a scent trail, it would be easier for Derek to locate him.

Isaac cranked a silver knob inscribed with an “H” and the tub began to fill. A knob directly beside that one channeled the water above, through the shower nozzle. Isaac didn’t much think he could tolerate a shower. He overstepped the tub’s enamel wall and plunked down in the deepening puddle of warm water.

He scrutinized his teeth in the faucet’s hump for signs of scurvy, but the bulge warped his reflection into a lopsided dental diagram and made it impossible to tell. There was a flat mirror tacked above the sink he could use, but he was far too tired to stand and go to it. He sunk forward, beneath the faucet, and heat gushed through his hair and around his ears.

Suddenly a hand ripped him back into life.

“Isaac!”

It was Scott. He seemed incredibly alarmed, but Isaac hadn’t a clue why.

He had begun to doze in that position. Around him he registered that the water had risen, and his forehead and cheekbones were dripping wet.

“What?” Isaac asked.

“You were—I thought,” Scott stammered. After a beat he said, “I’m sorry. I brought you a towel. It’s on the counter, with a toothbrush and some deodorant.”

“Oh,” Isaac said. “Thanks.”

He must have looked very pathetic, because Scott then asked him, “Do you need help?”

“What?” Isaac said.

“Do you need help,” Scott repeated.

Isaac regarded the space around him. Then he nodded, and crowded into the tub’s front.

Scott undressed to his blue jeans, and unplugged the drain before he sardined in behind Isaac. Wetness leached into the seat of his pants. He folded his legs on either side of Isaac, like a chair’s arms, and his torso formed the chairback.

Behind him, Isaac heard the crack of a lid and liquid soap wheezing from a bottle. Then Scott’s hands appeared at his head to lather it in.

After a moment Scott said, “I’m sorry.”

“You’re always sorry,” replied Isaac.

“Really,” Scott said.

Scott’s blunt fingertips worked at Isaac’s scalp. Periodically Isaac’s eyelids drooped shut.

“I wish we would have known sooner.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Isaac said.

“I can’t believe he did that to you.”

Isaac thought, _it wasn’t Derek’s fault either._

Scott raked his fingers through Isaac’s hair, root to end. Then he asked Isaac to grab the shower head. Isaac lurched onto his feet, and unhitched the shower head from its hook and reposed between Scott’s knees. He cranked the channeling knob and water gurgled down the shower head’s hose. Then a warm spray erupted onto his shoulder.

“Lean back,” Scott told him.

Isaac tipped back his head and Scott rinsed the suds from his hair. Then Scott passed the shower head over Isaac’s shoulder, and Isaac rested it in his lap, askew, so it drooled on his hipbone. Another lid cracked behind his back and Scott’s hands appeared soapy on his shoulders.

“I’m sorry we don’t have a better place to put you until Lydia gets the apartment,” Scott said.

“It’s fine,” said Isaac.

“But this is the only way he won’t find you.”

“I know.”

“Are you sure you’re OK with it?”

“Perfectly,” he monotoned.

Scott’s hands encircled Isaac’s torso to scrub his smooth, flat chest muscles. Isaac watched them, disembodied, lather spirals of foam on his skin. They lowered sequentially, from chest to rib to abdomen. Then a hand squished between Isaac’s thighs and shut around the base of his cock.

“Do you want me to?” Scott whispered. He was suddenly very close to Isaac’s ear.

Isaac heard his heartbeat thumping in the interim of silence.

Isaac. I-S-A-A-C. Five thumps for _Isaac_.

“Yes,” he said.

Scott’s hand sleeked from the base of Isaac’s cock to the head. Then it throttled, and stroked three quick repetitions.

Isaac upreared his legs, and flattened his feet on the tiled wall above the hot and cold knobs. Scott’s hand skimmed his sac and between his cheeks.

He circled the rim of Isaac’s ass, and Isaac slouched back on Scott’s chest like a wet rock. The shower head tumbled from Isaac’s lap and cracked on the tub floor. Then Scott’s hand closed on his cock again and stroked three more tight repetitions.

Isaac’s heartbeat cannoned in his ears. He grappled the tub’s hard enamel wall, panting, and spilled a heavy load onto his abdomen.

As he idled on Scott’s chest, with the shower head arcing polychromatic into thin air, he heard Scott whispering a word into his collarbone. It sounded like, “Sorry.”

* * *

 

“Here,” Scott said.

He frisked through his desk drawer and produced a blister pack of batteries, and turned it over to Isaac.

“In case those run out,” he said.

Isaac pocketed the package in the pouch of his hoodie, with the reading light. The hoodie belonged to Scott, as did the sweatpants. On Scott they would drag along the floor, but on him they discontinued at his ankles.

“Thanks,” said Isaac.

Scott scanned his bedroom for anything else to saddle Isaac with, but after a few moment’s searching found nothing.

“I think that’s all,” Scott said. “Are you ready?”

“Ready as I can be, I guess.”

Isaac faced the open closet. Eight or so glittering water bottles and a plastic grocery sack laden with Boost Bars hemmed one wall. Along the opposite wall, there were numerous paperback novels stacked knee-high. Their spines were wrinkled with wear.

Scott had jam-packed as many books as he could into the closet. Isaac doubted he would read even one of them.

“If you need anything— _anything_ —just knock, OK?”

Isaac. I-S-A-A-C. Five knocks for _Isaac_.

“OK,” he said.

Isaac stood before the threshold. His wet hair shivered on his head. He stepped forward and enclosed himself within the closet. Then he turned full-circle so he was facing the open doorway, and sat with his legs crossed.

“Scott?” he asked.

Scott stood, hand on the doorknob.

“Yeah?” Scott said.

“Thank you.”

Scott smiled, and then his smile was sealed out by the shadow-door.

**Author's Note:**

> I reckon I could have gone much further with more time, but I'm very happy with how this turned out.


End file.
